Raja Ram Mohan Roy

Born in 1772 at Radhanagar in Bengal, Ram Mohan Roy grew up amid multiple intellectual worlds. He mastered Sanskrit scriptures and logic; he learned Persian and Arabic, encountering Islamic theology and philosophy; and he later wrote persuasively in English. This multilingual, multi‑traditional formation shaped his reform: he could argue from the Upanishads for a nirguna (attributeless) conception of God while debating Qur’anic monotheism and quoting Locke or Bentham on rights and legislation. Early works such as Tuhfat‑ul‑Muwahhidin (“A Gift to Monotheists”) reveal a mind impatient with idolatry and superstition, yet careful to preserve devotion’s moral core. Roy’s institutional creativity matched his writing. The Atmiya Sabha in Calcutta convened discussions on theology and ethics; the later Brahmo Sabha (1828) formalized worship without image or priestly intermediation, emphasizing ethical monotheism. He translated and published selections from the Upanishads, arguing that the scriptural heart of Hinduism supported a rational theism. Engagement with Christian missionaries was vigorous: in The Precepts of Jesus he praised the Sermon on the Mount’s ethics while rejecting Trinitarian doctrine and miraculous claims, modeling a comparative method that treated all traditions as subject to reasoned scrutiny. His most famous public campaign targeted sati, the immolation of widows on their husbands’ pyres. Roy compiled scriptural and legal arguments against the practice, mobilized petitions, and wrote persuasive essays that helped create the intellectual climate for Governor‑General William Bentinck’s Regulation XVII of 1829 abolishing sati in Bengal Presidency. He also advocated widow remarriage, women’s property rights, and inheritance protections. These positions drew vitriolic opposition from some orthodox groups, yet Roy maintained that reform from within tradition was both possible and necessary. Education and the press were his twin tools. He supported English‑medium instruction in science and modern subjects, arguing—not to the exclusion of Sanskrit learning—that India needed laboratories and mathematics as much as classical grammar. His journalism in Sambad Kaumudi (Bengali) and Mirat‑ul‑Akhbar (Persian) championed the freedom of the press and criticized policies that hindered public debate. When press restrictions were imposed, he protested with legal and moral arguments that would echo through later nationalist demands for civil liberties. In 1831, representing the Mughal emperor Akbar II, Roy traveled to Britain to argue for the emperor’s pension and to observe British society firsthand. There he continued to write, meet reformers and politicians, and defend Indian interests in a language they would hear. He died in Bristol in 1833 from meningitis; the funeral crossed communal lines, a measure of his unusual public influence. Roy’s reputation has been narrated in several ways: as a rationalist who secularized religion; as a Vedantin who purified it; as a colonial collaborator who sought reform via imperial law; or as a proto‑nationalist who built Indian institutions that could one day contest imperialism on equal terms. Each lens reveals part of a complex figure. What is beyond dispute is the toolkit he left: associations that deliberate, newspapers that educate, petitions that pressure, and translations that carry ideas across linguistic borders. In that sense, Ram Mohan Roy did not simply advocate reforms; he constructed the very media by which a modern Indian public could imagine, argue, and legislate them.